In Testimony, Mother Who Killed Son, 8, Denies She Forcibly Drugged Him

The woman accused of killing her son in the Peninsula Hotel broke down into tears on the witness stand on Wednesday, as she admitted to a hushed court that she had tried to kill herself and her 8-year-old son through a lethal dose of drugs.

But the woman, Gigi Jordan, strongly denied the prosecutors’ account of the murder: that she had climbed on top of her son and brutally forced a liquefied mix of drugs and alcohol down his throat with a syringe.

Her testimony comes about four weeks into the murder trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, and about four and a half years after the death of her son.

Ms. Jordan, 53, was asked by her lawyer, Allen Brenner, if she had injected drugs into her son’s mouth, pinching his nose, covering his mouth and compelling him to swallow.

“No, I did not,” she answered.

“Did you give yourself and your son an amount of drugs that you believed would take your life and his?” the lawyer asked.

“Yes, I did,” she said, and began to weep. Justice Charles H. Solomon handed her a box of tissues.

Then Ms. Jordan, a former nurse who made millions of dollars with a home health care company, said there were circumstances and pressures that drove her to take such a drastic step.

She has never disputed that she killed her son, but has described it to reporters and in a bail application as a mercy killing. In an unusual defense, her lawyers have contended that she was in the grip of an extreme emotional disturbance created by her belief that she was about to be murdered, and that her son would end up in the custody of her second husband, a man she believed had tortured and raped the boy.

If a jury agrees, that defense could result in a manslaughter conviction.

The police found the boy, Jude Mirra, dead in a bed at the Peninsula Hotel at about noon on Feb. 5. The door had been barricaded with a chair. Ms. Jordan was on the floor next to the bed, surrounded by pills. A pill crusher and a syringe used to force feed patients were discovered, along with empty vodka bottles.

An autopsy showed Jude had ingested fatal doses of several medications, including the sleeping pill Ambien and the tranquilizer Xanax. A medical examiner testified the boy had bruises on his face and chest consistent with having a mixture of pills forced down his throat.

Image

Gigi Jordan took the stand on Wednesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, and will resume testifying on Thursday.CreditPool photo by Steven Hirsch

Central to Ms. Jordan’s defense is her accusation that her first husband and former business partner, Raymond A. Mirra, threatened to kill her or have her institutionalized. She has also said her second husband and Jude’s father, Emil Tzekov, a Bulgarian yoga instructor, sadistically abused the boy for years, causing a catatonic psychosis that doctors mistook for autism. Both men have vigorously denied the allegations.

Under direct questioning from her lawyer, Ms. Jordan began retracing the events that led her to conclude that she and her son were in grave danger. She recalled one night in December 2007, after a bath, when her son told her he was being sexually abused by his babysitter and Mr. Tzekov. Ms. Jordan said he was able to describe the abuse using a few simple words like yes, no and butt, as she asked him if any of the adults in his life were hurting him.

A month later, she said, Jude woke up one morning screaming, “Dad bad, dad bad.” That day, she asked Mr. Tzekov to move out of a house they were living in in Marin County, Calif.

A few months later, Ms. Jordan said Jude had learned to type messages on a computer. “Jude typed out, in some cases, very graphic descriptions the ways in which he was hurt both sexually and physically,” she said. “Most of it was about his father, but it was also about other people.”

She said Jude typed that his father had forced him to eat feces and had driven pins under his nails as a punishment, warning him not to talk. She said the boy also accused Mr. Mirra, his new wife and other people of being involved.

Ms. Jordan said she never reported the allegations to the police, but hired a San Francisco lawyer to investigate the matter and to contact the authorities. She also told her psychotherapist.

In February 2008, she said, she traveled with Jude to Cheyenne, Wyo., to meet with an F.B.I. agent who specialized in child pornography. She testified that the local police, apparently tipped off by the agent, arrested her there and took her to a hospital for a psychological evaluation.

“They thought the allegations sounded bizarre,” she said.

Jude was diagnosed with autism at a University of California clinic when he was less than 2 years old, Ms. Jordan said. But she doubted the diagnosis, she said, because his symptoms seemed to wax and wane.

For several years, Ms. Jordan took him to medical specialists across the country, seeking a cure for his symptoms and subjecting him to experimental chemotherapy, injections of powerful steroids and filtering his blood to counteract autoimmune disorders.

Ms. Jordan, who will resume testimony on Thursday, was composed as she talked of the treatments she pursued for her son. But when a picture was shown of her holding her baby boy in an apartment overlooking Central Park, before he showed symptoms of autism, she became teary-eyed.

“He was a beautiful, happy, healthy boy,” she said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A28 of the New York edition with the headline: In Testimony, Mother Who Killed Son, 8, Denies She Forcibly Drugged Him. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe